Turkey: Hrant Dink assassinated ten years ago (January 19, 2017)

On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the assassination of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul on January 19, 2007, the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP) recalls that his family and the Armenian community in Turkey are still waiting for justice – despite the fact that his murderer, who was still a minor back then, has already been convicted. “The bloody deed was a result of slander and defamation by the nationalist Turkish media. There must be a reappraisal – urgently,” demanded Kamal Sido, the STP’ Middle East Consultant, in Göttingen on Tuesday. Dink had been met with hostility for allegedly “insulting Turkishness” and because he had wanted to publicly discuss the genocide crimes against the Christian Armenians, the Assyrians/Aramaeans/Chaldeans (from 1915 to 1917), and the Pontos Greek – taking a stand for reconciliation. After several unjust rulings by the Turkish judiciary, he had turned to the European Court of Human Rights in October 2006. However, the editor of the bilingual magazine Agos was shot dead in public even before the court could deliver a verdict.

“There actual background of Dink’s murder was hardly addressed at all – but the shrinking Christian community in Turkey will not be safe unless the ugly face of nationalism is revealed and forcefully condemned,” Sido criticized. The increasingly aggressive policy of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had encouraged arbitrariness and hatred against the Armenian people. Only last Saturday (January 14), the Armenian member of parliament Garo Paylan had been attacked in the parliament by nationalist Turkish colleagues when he mentioned the crimes committed against the Armenians in his speech – and he was (almost unanimously) excluded from the next three parliament meetings. The Armenian author Sevan Nisanyan has been in jail since the beginning of 2014 because he demanded justice for his people. “Probably, it was no coincidence that the Armenian-born conscript Sevag Balikci was shot dead, within the Turkish army, on the anniversary of the genocide of the Armenians, April 24,” Sido said. Turkish courts had trivialized the incident, calling it “the result of a game among soldiers that ended tragically”.

“The fact that the German federal government has so far remained silent about the situation of the Armenians, the Assyrians/Aramaeans, the Alevites, Yazids, and Kurds is an encouragement for the Turkish government to commit even more human rights violations against the minorities and the Turkish democrats,” criticized Sido, stating that it was shameful for Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel, Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier not to take part in the meeting of the German Bundestag on June 2, 2016, in the course of which the genocide against the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and other crimes against Christian communities had been acknowledged as such.

Header Photo: STP